Writing

The last time I wrote billboards, I started in the usual place (big sketch pad, sharp pencil, back porch). Normally, I’d invest a day scribbling all over a half-dozen notebook pages before refining anything.

But by lunchtime, I found myself at my PC.

Editing. Refining. Nudging sample headlines on sample billboard comps a few pixels to the left.

In other words, fiddling.

Damnit.

Smooth and sensual, the Blackwing 602 is sex with an eraser attached.

You don’t see the big picture when you’re fiddling.

More proof; I was recently working on a magazine pitch; the story revolved around a police accountability activist, but the pitch was falling flat.

The real story finally emerged, but only after I stopped trying to dictate it to myself and worked it out on paper (the activist is the framework for the story, which is really about the justice system’s willingness to sometimes compound a mistake rather than admit error [duh]).

Simply put, when you’re mucking about with details, you’re not creating big ideas, which I assume are still the goal (though the success of Buzzfeed makes me wonder).

The Power of Paper

Here’s a thought: Computers are about execution, not conception.

It’s possible I’m wrong.

The generation that writes novels on smartphones and elevated selfies to an art form may create better on a blank screen than a blank piece of paper.

But I doubt it.

So do yourself a favor. Get a notebook or sketch pad (make sure it’s unlined, because lines are precisely the thing you’re trying to avoid).

Buy a great writing implement (I’m sold on the Blackwing pencils, which are expensive but draw like the right hand of God).

I clapped my tiny, overworked copywriter hands together in delight after reading that uber fantasy writer George RR Martin writes on a DOS-only computer that’s not connected to the Internet — using 1980s-vintage Wordstar 4.0 software (yes, it’s a slow day).

“I actually have two computers: I have the computer that I browse the Internet with that I get my email on, that I do my taxes on,” he said, trailing off. “And then I have my writing computer, which is a DOS machine not connected to the Internet.”

The program he uses to churn out thousands of pages of prose is WordStar 4.0, an ultra-minimal word processing application from the ’80s. Unlike some of today’s intentionally bare-bones writing applications, it is minimal due to technological constraints, not by design.

I’m willing to admit (to all three readers) I have devoted precious brainpower to the idea of building a basic writing computer — one equipped with only a command line interface and a disco-era text editor like Emacs.

It would lack the ability access the bright, shiny cat toy that is the Internet. Connectivity would be provided courtesy a basic, human-transported flash drive.

Simple. Clean. No distractions.

In fact, with a longer writing project on the horizon, last week found me almost starting work converting an older desktop PC.

In the end — like the Washington press corps — I enjoy distraction. And because I’m writing copy instead of novels or screenplays, I’m often online while writing. I tell myself it’s research.

Still, instead of searching for the Ultimate Word Processor, maybe writers should focus on creating viable time travel.

Just shipped one of those copy projects that leaves your screen cluttered with four open applications, three open LibreOffice files, six Markdown text files, two different text editors, Dropbox and Google Drive windows, and a command line terminal.

At first, it worked out. I was conceiving and writing ad campaigns with little more than a creative brief cluttering my desk. Maybe a sketch pad and pencils.

Simple. Neat. I was on top of it.

Times Have Changed

My last annual report project saw me extracting information from five websites, three Word files filled with written “client input,” notes from three interviews, and three pages of notes I scribbled while the client was talking.

Today’s creative brief is likely to include several websites loosely identified as source material. And a directive “to Google” your way to the rest of the information.

The Internet hasn’t been any easier on the English language than it has independent bookstores, but Gawker finally drew a line in the sand against the worst of the indignities:

“We want to sound like regular adult human beings, not Buzzfeed writers or Reddit commenters,” new Gawker Editor Max Read says in a memo to the publication’s writers. Words like “epic,” “pwn” and “derp” are no longer welcome on the site. Read also says the word “massive” is “never to appear on the website Gawker dot com.”

I support a ban on “epic” and its brethren, but wonder why “awesome” — perhaps the most overused English language word on the Intertubes — wasn’t similarly scalped.

Not that I’m complaining. It’s a start. (And I massively support the awesomely epic snark aimed at Buzzfeed.)

Every generation’s job description includes the creation of a new vocabulary (also included are rebellion and the idea they invented sex), but that doesn’t mean we have to buy into the less palatable attempts.

Scribd profits from rampant piracy, so why are publishers negotiating deals with them?

In a post on the Writer Beware blog, Michael Capobianco voices his concerns about Scribd’s new “All you can read” $8.95/month subscription service — and the deals negotiated by publishers with a company long known for doing little to combat piracy:

Just for the moment, let’s assume it is an okay deal for many authors. It’s tremendously better than the deal offered to musicians by music subscription services like Pandora and Spotify. Even so, this paradigm switch should be scrutinized with great care. It’s another instance of rich corporations expanding what can be done with authors’ works without consulting them, defining terms in such a way that no one really understands how it affects authors’ copyrights, and doing so based on language in contracts that never anticipated an e-book subscription service. Authors need to sit up and take notice, and protest if they think their rights are being abrogated. If it’s not a great deal–which, let’s face it, is likely, given the insistence of the major publishers on paying at most a 25% net royalty rate on e-books–all the more reason for concern.

Capobianco then asks some pointed questions about Scribd’s ongoing piracy problems, especially given their apparent willingness to monetize that piracy:

As you can see, this unauthorized copy of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 1, was illegally uploaded by Vladimir George Anghell, and Scribd is using it as bait for a 7-day free trial of their subscription service, that will, of course, transition automatically to a paid subscription if I do not cancel.

Think about it. All across the Scribd website, there are illegally uploaded, copyrighted files that you can only read in their entirety if you start paying Scribd, which doesn’t pay authors anything for those uploads. Almost as bad are the advertisements displayed next to pirated works.

Unfortunately, my 27 years in marketing have made me cycnical, so I wasn’t comforted by the way he qualified his “we’re fixing it” statement with enough weasel phrases to stock a petting zoo (favorites include repeated uses of “…a while” and “We’ve done a lot of work…”).

Ultimately, it’s clear Scribd’s real “defense” against piracy is to simply offload the burden of enforcement on authors:

Weinstein readily acknowledged the problem while outlining the extent and, difficulty of preventing, illegal uploads. Weinstein was also emphatic that “it’s not true” that Scribd was out to “incentivize” the uploading of illegal content. “There is unauthorized content on Scribd,” he said, “the problem dates back a while and I’ve been working with publishers on this for a while.” Weinstein said that while Scribd has not talked publicly about it—“we’ve tried to deal with it on an individual basis with take-down notices and in our new agreements with publishers”—he said, “we’ve done a lot of work on developing a technological solution to this and a process to deal with bad content on Scribd.”

Most note that while Scribd typically removes pirated work after the copyright holder locates it and files the appropriate takedown notice, they rarely punish pirates or remove other uploads coming from the same account.

Pirated books also reappear on the service as fast as they’re removed (so much for Scribd’s “fingerprinting” technology), and many writers — citing the never-ending time suck of searching online services and filing takedown notices — have simply given up policing Scribd.

Many of the writers in those comments simply shrug off piracy issues as intractable, but the truth is that Scribd could do a lot more to prevent piracy.

But why would Scribd invest in costly anti-piracy measures (hire staff to review book-length uploads for obvious piracy, implement a working fingerprint system, yadda yadda) when they can simply externalize the costs of intellectual property enforcement by switching the burden to writers? Isn’t externalizing costs the goal of every corporation?

Why are publishers so accepting of a company whose business model encourages piracy — and even profits from it?

It seems the creative class — musicians, photographers, writers — have developed something of an inferiority complex, at least in the face of technology companies.

As Capobianco notes:

I am amazed that they [ED: Scribd] do this so boldly, and that the legitimate publishers who are offering books through their subscription service apparently don’t care. I hope Scribd re-evaluates its policies and removes all unauthorized versions of copyrighted works from its subscriber service.

We’re told that opposing these companies is to get steamrolled by Inevitable Market Forces (Manifest Destiny lives!), as if these technologies — and the companies that profit from them — sprang fully formed from the earth.

The Internet is a human construct; we build it, and more importantly, we create the expectations and legal framework surrounding it. Right now, the expectation is that tech companies will hide the extent of the data they gather about you and profit from the content generated by others, and there won’t be much in the way of outcry.

Like musician David Lowery, I’d suggest the creative class is meekly accepting situations which — years from now — will cause us to look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

(Note: Oyster offers a monthly book subscription service similar to Scribd’s, yet without the piracy issues.)

As a group, writers are always on the search for the next cool writing tool, so when Matthew Stibbe of Bad Language wonders if his iPhone or iPad can serve as useful tools for editing MS Word documents, I suspect more than a few others wondered too.

Stibbe’s a Windows guy who uses Apple mobile devices, so as far as interoperability is concerned, he’s caught in the empty space between two walled kingdoms. His final word is that he can edit MS Word docs on his mobile devices, but he doesn’t necessarily want to.

I’m tempted to get all smug about my “open” relationship with Google and Linux except things on the Android mobile front really aren’t much better. In fact, Google typically supports Linux pretty well, but in the case of their Drive client (cloud file storage), they haven’t released a Linux version.

The Linux hordes are not pleased.

Still, like any writer with a tablet, I plumped for a Bluetooth keyboard and tried to embrace writing on a touchscreen, but I’m a spectacularly picky old guy who’s grown accustomed to the Emacs editor keyboard shortcuts, and nothing I found (so far) on my tablet supports them.

Unlike MS Word, I write using Markdown (which is stored as a text file), so you’d think finding happiness on a mobile device would be easier. And it is — but the rest of the world is unfortunately afflicted with MS Word.

I have found some success editing client-supplied MS Word files using Softmaker’s mobile suite. Softmaker is essentially an MS Word clone that runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, and the company recently introduced an Android version.

(I bought Softmaker years ago when OpenOffice [now LibreOffice] suffered at the hands of .docx files. LibreOffice now handles docx files nicely, but I maintain my Softmaker subscription as a “thank you” for maintaining a Linux version.)

In the face of all these software and ergonomic issues, my Ubuntu Linux equipped Dell XPS13 Ultrabook zips along nicely, takes up only a teensy bit more space than a tablet (it’s less bulky than a tablet and a keyboard), lives off its battery for hours, runs real writer’s software, keeps the screen and keyboard at good angles to each other, and saddles me with almost no compromises.

In other words, my writer’s tablet is an Ultrabook, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.

In the age of (ahem) an overabundance of the written word, One way to protect your reading time is to limit yourself to reading the good stuff. The really good stuff.

I’ve got a recommendation. I first met Elizabeth Royte when we were both writing about the bottled water industry (she wrote the excellent, award-winningBottlemania).

Royte’s superpower as a writer is that she knows how weave a detailed picture from small details without ever losing sight of her subject matter — a technique fully on display in her recently published article about the impacts of the fracking boom on small towns:

An hour passed, and I went outside to pace. The sidewalk was smoky, of course, and music wafted from the two strip clubs uphill from the train station, which sat on a rotary at the dead end of Main Street. In this merry atmosphere I chatted with itinerant oilfield workers and locals, visiting grandmothers, and the loquacious stationmaster, who told me the Empire Builder’s on-time rate, the previous month, was 0 percent. There was track work, of course, and conflicts with freight trains, but also collisions with trucks carrying oil, gravel, sand, water, and chemicals. The trucks were driven by exhausted young men servicing drill sites and fracking operations. (Developing a single fracking well involves forcing millions of gallons of water, laced with chemicals and sand, down boreholes that stretch for miles. The pressure cracks the shale, releasing oil and chemically polluted water. The liquids and other equipment are hauled in and out in trucks — thousands a day for every well under development.)

A racket up the street drew my attention. The stationmaster and I watched, slightly amused, as a drunk staggered from one of the strip clubs to his jacked-up truck. Screaming obscenities at an invisible enemy, he flopped backward out his pick-up door onto the pavement, and tried again to mount his own cab. After three attempts, he achieved the driver’s seat and began furiously revving his V-8 engine.

“Watch out if he gets it in gear,” the stationmaster said. “Sometimes the drunks don’t make it around this turn” — meaning the rotary in front of her station.

Almost as if on cue, the truck lurched, its tires squealed, and the sidewalk loiterers, including me, scattered like chickens. The pickup hurtled down Main Street, gathered speed, jumped the curb, and smashed head-on into the Amtrak building. “What did I tell you?” the stationmaster said, flinging her cigarette to the street in disgust. “Now I’ve gotta fill out a police report.”

It would be easy to let the drunk driver make her point for her, but Royte wraps up the incident — and says far more about the impact of the mining boom — by finishing with the stationmaster’s disgusted, cynical response.

Matthew Stibbe’s Bad Language blog posted a series of photographs of writer’s rooms, and while I’m always willing to peek into the life of another writer, I’m reminded why I close my eyes when I walk into my office, at least compared to most of these.

My office looks nowhere near as neat as most of these…

First, let me say I’ve got a great office; we live in a nice house on three wooded acres on the flank of a 14,000′ stratovolcano. The view out the window is just right; not the stellar vistas of the upstairs rooms, but a glimpse of the outdoors — enough to remind me I should finish work and go play.

The problem is that it’s been a long winter, and the office is in its pre-spring-cleaning state. If you photographed it for a post like Stibbe’s, you’d want to disinfect your blog after posting.

I’ve got three unused desktop PCs and monitors stacked in one corner, a wire document rack stuffed with fly rods in another. A rack of winter clothes is pushed up against the wall, and bookshelves (which attract clutter like politicians attract scandals) line the back.

Small stacks of paper, fishing gear, office supplies and other junk cover 75% of the floor.

And I can’t really see through the detritus to the top of my desk.

It looks like a sporting goods warehouse fell out of the sky and landed on a combination library/copier room/computer repair depot.

Still, there’s hope.

We’re in the midst of our first sunny, 70+ degree days of spring. Line up enough warm days end-to-end, add in a pinch of freedom from deadlines, and eventually even I throw open the windows, shovel out the expired paperwork, and store the winter clothes.

I don’t think I’ll ever quite achieve the stately, dignified writing rooms featured in Stibbe’s post (I just noticed the post was by Clair Dodd, the potential Dr. Who companion who writes for Bad Language), but then, they’re mostly British, and cleaning their writer rooms is just the kind of stiff upper lip kind of behavior you’d expect from them.

This New York Times story makes it clear that readers who blindly trust Amazon’s review system will eventually end up puzzled by the abominable prose filling the supposedly “five-star” book they just bought.

(Note: I’ve long been a member of Goodreads, a Google-owned book review site. I’m sure it’s being gamed, but it’s relatively easy to check the validity of reviewers, and it’s far more trustworthy than Amazon’s reviews.)

Long abused by family members, friends and authors trading glowing reviews with each other, Amazon’s reviews are to be trusted about as much as writer John Locke, the million-ebook-selling author who was outed in the NY Times article as having purchased 300 glowing reviews for his books — a fact not-surprisingly left out of his “How I Sold One Million E-Books in Five Months” ebook.

The Hidden Backstory

Sure to be ignored among all the gnashing of teeth is how easy it was for the “entrepreneur” selling all those reviews to find writers willing to create them:

How little, he wondered, could he pay freelance reviewers and still satisfy the authors? He figured on $15. He advertised on Craigslist and received 75 responses within 24 hours.

Potential reviewers were told that if they felt they could not give a book a five-star review, they should say so and would still be paid half their fee, Mr. Rutherford said. As you might guess, this hardly ever happened.

Amazon and other e-commerce sites have policies against paying for reviews. But Mr. Rutherford did not spend much time worrying about that. “I was just a pure capitalist,” he said. Amazon declined to comment.

Mr. Rutherford’s busiest reviewer was Brittany Walters-Bearden, now 24, a freelancer who had just returned to the United States from a stint in South Africa. She had recently married a former professional wrestler, and the newlyweds had run out of money and were living in a hotel in Las Vegas when she saw the job posting.

Ms. Walters-Bearden had the energy of youth and an upbeat attitude. “A lot of the books were trying to prove creationism,” she said. “I was like, I don’t know where I stand, but they make a solid case.”

For a 50-word review, she said she could find “enough information on the Internet so that I didn’t need to read anything, really.” For a 300-word review, she said, “I spent about 15 minutes reading the book.” She wrote three of each every week as well as press releases. In a few months, she earned $12,500.

“There were books I wished I could have gone back and actually read,” she said. “But I had to produce 70 pieces of content a week to pay my bills.”

Drawing parallels to content mills (like Copify) is very easy to do — and probably appropriate. It’s clear that most paid book reviews are sourced from existing content and glued together (rewritten just enough to beat the plagiarism filters) — a reasonable approximation of what goes on when writers pound out SEO articles for $12.

Once again, an overabundance of labor on the backend is making wholesale manipulation of online engines (search and review) a wholly cost-effective opportunity.

Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that is what writing is all about.

Keep writing (you’ll get more written if you stop reading serious “Ten Tips…” articles), Tom Chandler.

My downstairs office is big and quiet and jammed with bookshelves; it’s basically ideal for getting work done. I’m not distracted by an expansive view of the mountains and it’s wholly private.

On the warm, sunny days I sometimes turn off the horrendously fast desktop PC, grab the netbook, put my feet up on the porch railing and write outside.

For the picture I took my feet off the rail (the pond is just to the left)

I don’t get nearly as much written, but there are compensations; just now the tree squirrels started chattering indignantly, and a few seconds later a coyote trotted through the yard.

The landscape here is volcanic, so water percolates through it like it was a coffee filter. That means our small pond doesn’t look like much, but it represents some of the only standing water in the area.

So the parade of wild animals is continuous: birds, squirrels, deer, fox, snakes, mice, an osprey and the coyote stop by on a regular basis. It drives our half-lab/half basset crazy.

Early last Thursday, I watched a black bear swim laps, grunting like he was finally scratching a persistent itch (I think he’s the same bear who demolished our garage door last year).

If I get the urge, in less than fifteen minutes I can be fly fishing one of several pretty trout streams.

In short, there are real privations associated with rural living, but the wildlife and outdoor opportunities aren’t among them.

Amusingly, I still bristle when people say I’m “lucky” to live here, as if we didn’t plan this or make sacrifices to get our three wooded acres on the flank of a stratovolcano.

I can be a prickly, cranky sort, yet I’m smart enough to know a better reaction is gratitude; becoming a fulltime professional writer today means overcoming a lot of challenges I never faced.

And here I find myself working from a part of the world unblighted by high rises and traffic.

Which means I did get lucky; putting my feet up on the porch rail means I’m literally staring out at trees and a mountain — not suburbia or an apartment parking lot.

It’s easy to get swept up in the whirlwind of work, invoicing hassles, client abuses and the massive changes sweeping the industry.

It’s better to experience a little gratitude that I get to do this at all.

UPDATE: After watching this three times, I realize I had no real idea how powerful a storyteller he is. His movies had always moved me, but listen to the rhythms and intonations of his speech. He’s always in story mode…